


Come on, skinny love, just last the year.

by writersstareoutwindows



Category: Elder Scrolls Online
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-11
Updated: 2017-06-11
Packaged: 2018-11-12 17:50:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11166975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writersstareoutwindows/pseuds/writersstareoutwindows
Summary: Now all your love is wasted, then who the hell was I?A doomed Vestige realizes that she is such--the only snippet I've managed to write for a larger tragedy.





	Come on, skinny love, just last the year.

Abella did not burst into the Harborage--she exploded.

Her braids were swinging loose. She fairly crackled with bright energy and her whole body seemed to vibrated. She had reached Varen before anyone quite realized what was going on. Her presence simply happened, eating up all the space in the close cavern at once.

“I need you to open a portal to Coldharbour.”

Frenetic energy spilled from her lips. Varen’s companions stood apart from the two as though Abella’s presence had a physical aura.

“Vestige,” he said, unusually careful, “what has happened to you?”

Abella slashed her hands through the air. “No, I need a portal.”

She had not raised her voice, yet her intensity was piercing. Lyris moved into that ineffable aura and placed a solid hand on her shoulder.

“Abella,” she said. “Calm down and explain yourself.”

Lyris’ solidarity forced Abella to slow her racing mind. She took a deep, frustrated breath. Could they not see how absolutely imperative this was?

“I need to rescue someone,” she said. Her words crackled. “He gave himself up to Molag Bal to save us. I owe him my life!”

“Seeing as you cannot die, that's hardly a debt,” Tharn put in flippantly.

Abella had eyes only for Varen. Bright energy collected behind her teeth, pouring yellow over her lips. She seemed to have so much of it, but Varen could sense the thinning of power around her.

“Please,” she said, her tongue a candle.

Varen spoke softly. “I am sorry to hear of his loss, but he sacrificed nobly. I cannot send you recklessly into Coldharbour.”

Lyris recoiled with a yelp. Abella’s eyes burned.

“You did it for Tharn! For Sai!”

He had never known someone to plead while standing on their feet with so much power. Certainly not her. Yet she did.

“You can do it, I know you can. Let me save Verandis.”

Lyris, to no one's surprise, interceded again. “We knew where to find Sai. Kyne’s breath, that’s the only reason we needed Tharn!”

The look that Abella fixed on her was the same one that Vaermina’s minions had seen before their end.

“I’ll find him. I won’t leave him there. I promised.”

Varen raised a conciliatory hand in the path of Abella’s scorching, sunlight eyes.

“Vestige--”

The Abella who manifested then was not someone any person had seen before.

 _“Don’t call me that!_ I'm not some vestige of who I was. I can't be! Part of myself may be trapped in Oblivion for your sake, but that can’t be all I am!” Tears flowed freely down her cheeks. “My wishes matter! My love matters! Why can't you do this for me?”

A flash of light punctuated her question. Varen felt heat and something cold below it.

“Molag Bal already has my soul,” she said. “Will you let him keep my heart, too?”

“And here I thought she had a crush on you,” Tharn scoffed to Lyris.

Lyris shot him a glare. “What are you blabbering about, Tharn?”

“Mara’s tender heart,” he exclaimed, “are you all blind to each other?”

He pushed Lyris spitefully aside, daring to step between Abella and Varen. In a burst of uncharacteristic anger, Abella moved to shove him, but he caught her arms.

“No, Yonwin, that is your heart.” He pressed his hand over her chest. “It is beating and you are alive. Perhaps because of this man’s sacrifice. Do not waste that.”

He held her gaze for a heated moment before she wrenched away.

“Is it that I am too weak, Varen? That there is not enough of me left to survive...that I am just a vestige?”

He did not answer, for he knew she would not be consoled. He could not bear to speak true, of the silence he felt where her soul should breathe. He bowed his head and endured the rage he deserved.

“And that a vestige cannot feel or breathe, a vestige cannot live, a vestige is dying, that I am a vestige and not a girl?”

The tears flowing down her cheeks turned to sobs as her fury burned into piteous ash. She sank to her knees under the weight of emotion moving inward. Varen did not dare move, knowing he would be no comfort. Tharn, conscience affected only slightly, decided he had done his part, while Lyris was too dumbstruck to react. The woman who had entered with the force of a nova was now a ball of aching sobs on the ground.

Sai, of them all, was the first to move. He barely knew her name, yet hers was the first face he’d seen after two years in the Halls of Torment.

Cadwell beat him to it.

He swooped around Abella from nowhere like a tall, grey mother bird. His gangly arms locked around her shoulders, his kitchen-pot helmet bumping her head gently.

“There now, there now, old Cadwell’s got you. Don’t listen to these grumpy folk.”

That drew out a watery laugh.

“I’ve got to get to him. Cadwell, you understand…”

“I understand.” He patted her hair. “But don’t hurt yourself worrying. Coldharbour is altogether a nicer place than here, and I should know, I’ve lived there a millenia!”

She held his arm. “There’s not going to be...anything left of me...is there?”

She hiccuping on sobs, ash spilling from her lips. She seemed...diminished.

“Sh,” Cadwell muttered, almost sharply. “Shhh, don’t say that now. Come, you need a bracing cup of tea! I have just the thing brewing.”

Abella allowed herself to be swept away in Cadwell’s fit of mothering. Her tears had subsided marginally. He closeted her from the others, pouring tea, untangling her hair, redoing her braids.

By the time she left, she was able to exchange short words about amulets and worm-kings with Sai, Tharn, and Lyris. To Varen, she spoke not at all.


End file.
